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Peak irony. He calls out stupid people for being merely vessels for ideologies. Then immediately proceeds to declare - with effortless stupidity - that god is

Peak irony. He calls out stupid people for being merely vessels for ideologies. Then immediately proceeds to declare - with effortless stupidity - that god is the source of liberation from stupidity. It's peak irony. And it effortlessly describes the real state of the world; we are all bound by the ideas that flow through us. There is no escape into critical reasoning or any other ideology, precisely because these are all ideologies. They are merely information structures flowing through the network. You are always going to be 'stupid' by his definition unless you personally verify all the information you receive and conduct well designed experiments that you personally see the results of. Otherwise you are choosing a side and trusting one cluster of information structures over another. The world is a hall of mirrors - get used to it and design your world view to accept this state of affairs.

InTheArena 5y ago
I don't understand who Bohnhoeffer was, what he was fighting on - who he was leading - and what he paid his life for. Bonhoeffer did, in fact, reject the poplar ideas that "flowed though" his community. His sin was was rejecting the Nazi attempt to co-opt Christianity via the German Christian movement. His "confessing church" was one of the very very few organized responses to Hitler-ism in Germany.
- plutonorm 5y ago
  You entirely missed my point that this idea of good ideology and bad ideology is a hall of mirrors. We are all embedded in the same network of information and we are carried by their tides. In using one ideology to escape another he is merely choosing a different tide.
  - InTheArena 5y ago
    He used his ideology to break away from the group and to found a group in opposition to the first.
    - CamperBob2 5y ago
      ... a group based on a religion responsible for no small amount of evil in itself. As the GP suggests, replacing one brand of stupidity with another isn't the solution. It's the whole problem. Bonhoeffer's essay is worthwhile, but it's also true that his closing paragraphs provide a flawless example of what the previous ones warned about.
      - macintux 5y ago
        > ... a group based on a religion responsible for no small amount of evil in itself. As the GP suggests, replacing one brand of stupidity with another isn't the solution. It's the whole problem. Or, maybe, only a powerful belief in something can provide the strength to actively resist the encroaching darkness.
        CamperBob2 5y ago
        Valid point there for sure. They say that if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything, and there's plenty of proof of that across the entire political spectrum. And it works both ways: if you have faith in your own purpose while your adversaries remain disorganized and irresolute, you have a hell of an advantage regardless of whether your cause is just.
bsedlm 5y ago
> He calls out stupid people for being merely vessels for ideologies. Then immediately proceeds to declare - with effortless stupidity - that god is the source of liberation from stupidity. His understanding of god is very different from yours. He seems to understand god internally, within himself, not as an external force beyond (which seems closer to your own undesrtanding of this old, complex, topic).
- plutonorm 5y ago
  it doesn't matter - it's still an ideology that we choose to adopt, we are just as blind to it's evil as those bound up in any other ideology. We are all blind - to attempt to escape your current cave of shadows by moving to the adjacent cave is pretty pointless.
groby_b 5y ago
Of course "the world is a hall of mirrors" is just your ideology. Maybe there were additional peaks of irony left after Bonhoeffer's, and you were meant to explore them.

InTheArena 5y ago

I don't understand who Bohnhoeffer was, what he was fighting on - who he was leading - and what he paid his life for. Bonhoeffer did, in fact, reject the poplar ideas that "flowed though" his community. His sin was was rejecting the Nazi attempt to co-opt Christianity via the German Christian movement. His "confessing church" was one of the very very few organized responses to Hitler-ism in Germany.

plutonorm 5y ago
You entirely missed my point that this idea of good ideology and bad ideology is a hall of mirrors. We are all embedded in the same network of information and we are carried by their tides. In using one ideology to escape another he is merely choosing a different tide.
- InTheArena 5y ago
  He used his ideology to break away from the group and to found a group in opposition to the first.
  - CamperBob2 5y ago
    ... a group based on a religion responsible for no small amount of evil in itself. As the GP suggests, replacing one brand of stupidity with another isn't the solution. It's the whole problem. Bonhoeffer's essay is worthwhile, but it's also true that his closing paragraphs provide a flawless example of what the previous ones warned about.
    - macintux 5y ago
      > ... a group based on a religion responsible for no small amount of evil in itself. As the GP suggests, replacing one brand of stupidity with another isn't the solution. It's the whole problem. Or, maybe, only a powerful belief in something can provide the strength to actively resist the encroaching darkness.
      - CamperBob2 5y ago
        Valid point there for sure. They say that if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything, and there's plenty of proof of that across the entire political spectrum. And it works both ways: if you have faith in your own purpose while your adversaries remain disorganized and irresolute, you have a hell of an advantage regardless of whether your cause is just.

bsedlm 5y ago

> He calls out stupid people for being merely vessels for ideologies. Then immediately proceeds to declare - with effortless stupidity - that god is the source of liberation from stupidity. His understanding of god is very different from yours. He seems to understand god internally, within himself, not as an external force beyond (which seems closer to your own undesrtanding of this old, complex, topic).

plutonorm 5y ago
it doesn't matter - it's still an ideology that we choose to adopt, we are just as blind to it's evil as those bound up in any other ideology. We are all blind - to attempt to escape your current cave of shadows by moving to the adjacent cave is pretty pointless.

groby_b 5y ago

Of course "the world is a hall of mirrors" is just your ideology. Maybe there were additional peaks of irony left after Bonhoeffer's, and you were meant to explore them.